HERO: The Chinese Inner Creating/Dueling Spirit Beautifully Illustrated
Written: Aug 28 '04 (Updated Aug 28 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A deeply philosophical episode in Chinese history beautifully dramatized.
Cons: Some Westerners will find it a tough "read," although they will enjoy the fighting scenes.
The Bottom Line: More than martial-arts fights slo-mo-ing through the air.
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| Ed.Williamson's Full Review: Hero (2004) |
This is the first martial-arts movie by director Zhang Yimou, and it cuts its way into 2004’s cinematic lineup with a flash of steel and a heart full of love. Using an all-Chinese cast (remember John Wayne dolled up to play Genghis Khan in "The Conqueror?" Or countless other Westerners in Asian costume? That’s how phony we round-eyes look playing Asians. Zhang you very much for doing it right in this film.) Director Yimou captures the cultural idiom and spirit of ancient China in a way no Western director ever could.
The locations are lavishly photographed with an eye to maximization of the geography and seasonal expression; some of them literally make your mouth water they are so beautiful. Christopher Doyle’s cinematography captures all this like a landscape voyeur locked in a dark cell about 10 years recently released into the lush sunlit landscape of a fairy tale: his camera positively revels in the tones, colors, and flowing movements of the trees, the waves of flowing fabric, and even the slow, hanging fall of droplets of water. Even breathing seems to be caught on film, so deep is the vision here.
“Hero” has been blowing away audiences in Asia and Europe since 2002, and it’s nice that it has finally arrived in America; its timing is good because at the end of a month with few zinger movies, this one zings and zings right on key.
The setting is around 200 A.D., in a China divided into seven warring partitions that a leader named the King of Quin slowly brings together with a great army. Here is where the Chinese story-telling technique rubs against our more familiar linear Western storytelling/storyhearing sensibilities. We Westerners like it straight and chronological; a story told in an unbroken straight line; a form of narrative going back to the Greeks. In Asia, on the other hand, stories are told much more wholistically; i.e. from several different directions, narrators, and time-frames, which is actually a more realistic model of how information reaches our brains in realtime. Thus, in the film, we get multiple narrators- some honest and some liars- and we get flashbacks and flashforwards all intermixed.
That will tax some Western viewers but Oriental people (and others where wholistic information transmission is the tradition) will get it quickly. Go back and look at “Rashomon” (or see it for the first time- it’s a delight!) and you will get the idea.
The good side of all this for everyone is that these narrations are told in a breathtakingly beautiful and multisensory way---yet with restraint. Whereas in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the action scenes pulled out all the stops until they were parodied by Shrek and other films, Hero holds the line of restraint in most places, so that it comes across as only partially mythic, but greatly realistic.
This is the poetry of a simple and beautiful haiku brought to life: droplets of water take on sensuous lifespans falling from leaf to river surface, sexual hunger is played out ravishingly under swirling red silk rather than in slow frames of moving amber flesh, windblown golden leaves swirl around the people like day-genies taking souls to worlds beyond. Above all things, human eyes communicate volumes like no words could ever hope to convey. Martial-arts was never like this in the "Hi! Hi!" days of Bruce Lee and his Dragons.
Contrapuntal to the flowing, rhythmic chaos of the swordplay, the loving, and all the other dissimilar aspects of the film, is the symbolism of the king. His massive armies maneuver in stark, breathtaking sweeps far more menacing than those of the CGI-interlaced Lord Of The Rings armies, because these guys actually seem to be GUYS, not those monster-like beings of the Tolkien tale, and in their own monolithic way they seem far more monstrous than the monsters in the LOTR trilogy.
So what is the story in the film (A film as beautiful and as sensual as this almost needs no “story”) ?
A warrior who has no name (Jet Li) comes to the heavily guarded palace of the Qin King (Chen Daoming). He has come to tell the great king how a trinity of death-dealers were to try to kill the monarch, but destiny has changed the planned events. This trio is/was the lethal, ninji-like assassins “Sky” (Donnie Yen), the amazing “Steel” (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), and his lover “Snow” (Maggie Cheung Man Yuk). The warrior with no name fittingly calls himself Nameless (evoking Eastwood memories from the Dollar movies.)
"Nameless" recounts his deeds on behalf of the people. And he shares his sorrow that the people have been divided into different areas of land. The king, who has been through all manner of intrigue, loyalty, and betrayal tries to sift through everything with the story of the man who would bring him death. And then, added to all this, there’s another Zhang---- along with the deadly trio and “Nameless”, “Steel” has a lovesick apprentice played by Zhang Ziyi , the girl who flew down the waterfall in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,.” who functions, one supposes, as a sort of scribe, or the one who saves the memory of all that is to happen, but that is left to conjecture. She is one hot distraction in everything she does, however, another way the director keeps your mind off balance.
Director Zhang Yimou, of "Ju Dou" and "Raise the Red Lantern," fame, seems not so much interested in creating an international blockbuster as in exploring the spirituality within the martial-arts tradition.
Herein is the one weakness of the film: in order to conduct his exploration, he does this, to some degree, at the sacrifice of the story-line. It seems a bit oblique, even by Asian standards, and left me hungry to know more on both ends of the story, but especially about the lovers “Steel” and “Snow.” Where was the logic of their love? Not that it did not exist; I simply wanted to know what had made it come to life. And where was the logic of their nationalism? I assume that this was their motivation, but there could have been other dimensions here.
Even so, I enjoyed immensely the “detour” that Yimou took. He points to an artistry here that overcomes the traditional Western masculine-only understanding of how power is wielded, and how sexuality is wielded as well; a sort of infusion of power and sensuality, actually. We see that (and Western minds may misunderstand it) in the symbolic merger of swordplay and calligraphy. Calligraphy is shown as a fluid, artistic merger of penmanship with the emotional/intellectual will, just as Chinese swordplay is shown as an almost musical, poetic interweaving of the same will.
The Chinese understanding of the whole-is-greater-than-the-parts shows itself in a revelation that eventually comes to Nameless that the king is actually bringing about the rebel ideal: “Our Land”, rather than seven “My Lands.” And acceptance of the ideal gives way to Honorable Surrender Unto Death, another Asian archetype which perhaps found its way even into Western martyrdom traditions, possibly that of the Crucifixion story itself.
For just as in that Western story, the hero, “Nameless” becomes greater by far in his non-existence than in his life, thus explaining and amplifying his meaning as “Nameless.” This is where the Asian hero archetype comes (from death) into life. And in this movie, we can understand much of how Asian people view death itself. If it is for honor, and for the people, it is a great good. It is, in this mode of thinking, even better than living to be honored as a ”living legend.” In this frame of reference, the term “living legend” is an oxymoron. Heroism itself, then, is the stuff of a good memory. And only a person of honor is worthy. And honor springs from the people, and their-our land.
So open up your Western mind and go see this one. Even if you can’t wander your way through the small maze that is the plot, you’ll be enthralled by what you see and hear. And if you are an “action” fan, there is something here for even your gratification. This is an end-of-summer-delight.
My rating: Four Stars/****
(PG-13: violence, nudity)
Starring: Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung Man Yuk, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Daoming, Donnie Yen.
Director: Zhang Yimou.
Running time: 1 hr. 39 min.
Recommended:
Yes
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Ed.Williamson
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Member: Ed Williamson
Location: Way Out West, USA
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Fight 'em till Hell freezes over, then fight 'em on the ice!
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